I Am A Child Of Television

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Short Takes – July 17, 2007

After the length of time that it took to crank out the last Short Takes I was tempted to make this one a PTC only column to get it done on time. And really this post is pretty much that, only not quite because there are a couple of things that I wanted to talk about.

Gizzie probably going away: The Grey's Anatomy relationship between George (T.R. Knight) and Izzie (Katherine Heigl), which in typical modern media fashion has been given the vaguely obscene sounding designation Gizzie (and if you don't get why that's vaguely obscene sounding, I won't explain it to you – I can be embarrassed by such things) may not survive into the next season. According to Mike Ausiello in TV Guide the George and Izzie storyline may be ended because "A source close to ABC tells me that George and Izzie polled 95 percent negative, leading one of the 200 or so participants to conclude that, 'Gizzie will be dropped.'" Which of course is how all decisions in literature are done; by polling 200 people. Like it or not we the audience aren't the final arbiters of the directions that story lines proceed in. If we were, Gone With The Wind would probably have ended with Rhett Butler knocking on the door of Tara and saying "Frankly my dear I made a mistake when I left you."

Money talks, Art walks: It seems that part of the plan for this coming season of 24 involved shooting in Africa. It was such a major part of the storyline that the decision by studio executives not to shoot in Africa meant a three week delay in production because the entire story for the show's seventh season had to be thrown out. According to Ausiello again, the network found that the idea of shooting in Africa too expensive, and the show's producers couldn't find anywhere in the greater Los Angeles area that looked like Africa. Apparently these picky producers never heard the statement from a old time network executive who, when asked to sign off on an extensive location shoot, said (in a quote generally ascribed to Ronald Reagan) "A tree's a tree."

Some differences between Americans and Canadians: Denis McGrath did what a lot of broadcasters used to do during the summer and put on reruns in his blog last week while he was struggling with some real world writing. One of these typically long posts – Denis is a very opinionated guy and he does go on (and on), although it's almost invariably strong and thoughtful ranting – had some nuggets about the differences between Americans and Canadians when it comes to TV. The article – Getting Schooled – is Denis's responses to an e-mail interview from a journalism student named Nicole. Here are a couple of major points. I won't touch on most of the points though if you're interested in Canadian TV it is a must read. To the question of the differences between writing shows for Canadians and Americans Denis responds that Canadians are on the whole less insular than Americans, and that shows which use irony do better with Canadians than they do with Americans. There's truth in this idea that Canadian and American tastes don't always mesh, though I'm not really prepared to quantify it the way Denis is. I do know that even in the last year of its run, when Americans writing in rec.arts.tv were screaming for its cancellation, Caroline In The City was in the top ten (and maybe the top five) in the Canadian ratings. Similarly, Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip was never as unpopular in Canada as it was in the States. Then McGrath adds:

On a more practical level, the differences have to do with social pressure. Because the religious right isn't quite as militant or influential in Canada, you can portray things that you simply can't in the USA: teenagers can have sex on TV here, without immediately getting pregnant. If they do get pregnant, they could actually have an abortion, not be forced to keep the baby or have a magic miscarriage. Degrassi actually had lots of trouble getting some of their shows past the N, though it's their most popular show. Shows that aired here and were no big deal were too hot to handle down south. That's telling. The Sopranos
runs on CTV here unbleeped. Dropping an F or an S bomb won't be thought of as bringing the whole of western civilization to a halt.

He forgot to mention nudity but it falls into the same consideration as "dropping an F or an S bomb." You can show bare breasts – and not just nipples either but the firm round and fully packed object – without anyone demanding fines or that your license be pulled. And they've been doing it for decades –the first bare breast I saw on conventional TV was in the early 1970s. Movies can be shown uncut, but tend not to be because Canadian TV networks get their TV prints from the studios who cut them to shreds so that they can be broadcast in the USA.

But it's in response to a question on the impact of American TV on Canada that McGrath makes a telling point.

We're the only country in the world that receives U.S. network feeds in their entirety on our cable systems. So their shows are all on at the same time as in the USA. No other country has this burden, and it is a burden, because in many ways we really are what Hollywood would like us to be: an extension of the U.S. domestic market.

The USA is the largest and most successful exporter of culture the world has ever known. And we're right next door. In other countries, people love U.S. shows, but they also love their own cop shows, their own lawyer shows, or family dramas, or soaps, or talk shows. Canada is an anomaly in the sense that most of our top 20 shows are American.

What makes it even stranger is that you'll see lots of Canadians stand up and wave the flag for Canadian music, or Canadian books, -- hell, they'll get all misty eyed at Hockey Night in Canada
and the 'I Am Canadian' beer ad, but they're more than happy to watch another nation's values and obsessions on TV every night.

And of course he's right. Just ask a Canadian about his Miranda rights sometime – a concept that doesn't exist in Canada because our constitution and our legal protections are different here. It's part of why I almost never review Canadian shows, and part of the reason why I constantly rail at the Parents Television Council for their efforts to treat every viewer like a "pre-tween" child. Because what shows up on American TV is what I'm spoon-fed by Canadian television networks – except for the CBC who have problems of their own – even without cable systems sending an unadulterated stream of the stuff into my home. And yeah I watch it, in part because the Canadian networks arrange their schedules to make it hard to see Canadian shows or even to know that they're on, but also because, too frequently my choice isn't between a Canadian cop show and an American cop show but between an American cop show and an American lawyer show. So sue me for wanting the PTC and the FCC to stop making all TV into pap suitable for a 9 year-old but come close to criminalizing (due to huge FCC fines) programs suitable for adults.

Who does the PTC hate this week?: Anyone who disagrees with a " broadcast decency amendment" to the "Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill" – in other words a bill that otherwise has absolutely nothing to do with broadcasting but which is necessary to pass. The amendment was proposed by Kansas Republican Sam Brownback, who just happens to be a member of the PTC's advisory board; imaging that. PTC President Tim Winter stated "If Senators are sincere about support for what Brownback's amendment would accomplish, why would they oppose it? The Senate – and the public – are not in a position to wait around for the other committees to act. The recent 2^nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that allows the f-word and s-word to be aired at any time of the day combined with the upcoming September hearing on the Janet Jackson case dramatically underscore the importance and urgency of this issue. The Senate must not adopt the "wait and see" attitude that it did for two and a half years following the Janet Jackson incident – the entertainment industry's lawsuits do not permit it." Remember of course that the PTC denies the legitimacy of any appeal against what it sees as its victories – most of which come from a regulatory body (the FCC) rather than the courts – and this amendment is an attempt to, as good old Barney Fife would put it, "nip it in the bud – nip it!" There is so much wrong with this effort that it is difficult to know where to start on it. What Senator Brownback is attempting is familiar to online Poker players as the same tactic used to pass the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 as part of the SAFE Port Act, a necessary piece of law that had no connection with Internet Gambling or the Internet at all. The Brownback amendment is an attempt to make FCC policy as defined by Kevin Martin into rule of law and pre-empt any attempt by the television networks to obtain legal definition of boundaries. The Brownback amendment is an attempt to reinstate legislatively what the Second Circuit called an "arbitrary and capricious" policy. It is a perfect example of the "social conservative" agenda.

Opposition to the Brownback amendment has come from some interesting quarters including the United States Chamber of Commerce which sent a letter to the Chairman and ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, expressing a view which disagrees with the PTC's position on the amendment. In the letter they state that "It is important to note that while the decision affects the FCC's ability to find broadcasters liable for the airing of fleeting or isolated expletives, it does not impact the FCC's ability to assess fines of up to $325,000 per utterance in cases where multiple or repeated expletives were aired in violation of FCC rules. Therefore, the only effect of the amendment would be to unreasonably subject broadcasters to a $325,000 penalty for the random utterance of an expletive at a live sporting event, convention, or performance." This of course is a point that the PTC and FCC chairman Martin are desperate to make people forget. It is their claim that any use of the "f-word and s-word" is by the very nature of the words not only obscene but in the case of the F-word can only be seen in a sexual context, and that by overturning the FCC decision on fleeting obscenities the "liberal" 2^nd Circuit has permitted writers to fill their scripts with those words. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also states in their letter that "Senator Brownback's amendment on 'excessively violent video programming' is fatally flawed because it fails to acknowledge that descriptions or depictions of violence on television are protected as free speech by the First Amendment of the Constitution," and that "The amendment is also unconstitutionally vague and overly broad. It appears to cover everything from fictional violence to war coverage to sporting events. The resulting regulatory uncertainty would needlessly harm the ability of the broadcast industry to supply the type and variety of television programming sought by the American television viewer. Indeed, the amendment could severely distort the market and alter business models by forcing programming and all associated advertising onto alternative media platforms, such as the Internet."

The Chamber's letter also cuts to the heart of the difference between economic conservatives and social conservatives – because I'm sure that at its philosophical heart the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is a conservative organization – and that is the need for government to regulate. In the second paragraph of its letter the Chamber states, "Government regulation over broadcasting should be kept to the minimum and exercised only to the degree clearly required by the public interest. Parents currently have the tools necessary to protect their children from inappropriate content.... Moreover, two-thirds of all U.S. households do not even include a child under 18. Therefore, there is not a public interest justification for further government regulation of the broadcasting industry." They state this point again in the next to last paragraph saying that, "Moreover, the amendment would constitute government intervention where there is not a market failure. If a show does not achieve high enough ratings, it is removed from the schedule. At the same time, parents have the tools needed to protect their children." But of course the PTC has argued and continues to argue to anyone who will listen that the tools that parents have (and the letter specifically mentions the V-chip) not only don't work but are worse than useless, and that parents need government to intervene in order to protect their children (and, though the PTC doesn't come out and say it, themselves). This is in stark contrast to the TVWatch survey that the letter quotes that states that "92% of parents agree with the statement: "Government involvement in curbing the amount of violence on television is okay in theory, but at the end of the day, the best way to prevent a child from seeing content deemed inappropriate is a parent in the home...not a politician in Washington."

The PTC's Broadcast Worst of the Week is a show which was on the list a couple of weeks ago and which was cancelled even before that; The Loop. The PTC cites "multiple instances of casual sex, infidelity, and strong sexual innuendo" as reasons for naming it as the Worst of the Week. The storyline they describe has Sam, wearing a fat suit after a complaint from some passengers on the airline for which he works, being seduced by his boss's girlfriend who he was meant to spy on because she was suspected of being unfaithful. The PTC takes a certain pleasure in detailing a "graphic scene is shown of Sam receiving implied fellatio and moaning in the airplane lavatory." The big thing though is the conclusion that the PTC emerges with: "The Loop represents some of the worst and most inappropriate programming for the family hour, unapologetically polluting prime time with raunchy sexual themes. The Loop is exactly the type of program that parents should guard their families against." Set aside inflammatory adjectives like "polluting" and the reference to the non-existent "Family Hour" which only the PTC believes still exists. It's that last part of that last sentence that counts: "...parents should guard their families against." The PTC's entire point in their lobbying is that parents don't/can't/won't guard their families against objectionable programs so that an organization like the PTC has to do it for them by lobbying and pressuring government to do the "right" thing – the right thing being defined by the PTC, rather than by parents themselves who know their own families and know what they themselves want and don't want their kids to see.

The PTC's Cable Worst of the Week (all the Cable Worst of the Week links go back to the current WOTW so you may not see this) is Kathy Griffin's My Life On The D-List (on Bravo) which the PTC says, "started as a mock-umentary, chronicling Griffin's pseudo-celebrity misadventures. But now the show documents her climb to A-list fame. Not only has Griffin performed in Carnegie Hall and garnered an Emmy nomination, she may just become the newest addition to ABC's The View." This may come as a news flash, but none of that puts her on the A-List or even rising to the A-List. Still, that's not the PTC's objection, though they warn ABC to "look over this comic's raunchy and crude reality series." What caught their attention in this particular episode is Griffin's appearances as hostess of the "GayVN Awards" (which is an off-shoot of the Adult Video News – AVN – Awards). A the PTC puts it, "If you aren't familiar with the GayVN awards, they highlight 'acting' accomplishments within the homosexual pornography industry. Homosexual Porn Oscars, if you will. A niche market, yes—but one near and dear to the heart of Kathy Griffin." The review then describes Griffin picking out her wardrobe for the show, which given that this is Kathy Griffin we're talking about, was probably done with an indescribable edge that doesn't come across when read on the printed page. But greater anger seems to be derived from the venue for Griffin's appearance, the awards show itself. Now I have no doubt that the PTC would be just as irate if Griffin had been hosting the main AVN Awards, which are more oriented to the mainstream side of porn (though they don't object to Gay porn there either) but because it's the GayVN awards, there's a bit of a patina of homophobia. The highlight this moment in particular: "An unnamed presenter and presumable porn star, gives this introduction before handing out one of the gala's many awards: 'Best all-sex video. That would be that slap on it, spit on it, stick it in the ass kind of video you love to see.' The crowd's reaction? Effusive cheering." After noting that Bravo airs the episode "at noontime and even at eight in the morning" they add, "It's clear that BRAVO pushes this indecent content in pursuit of ratings. What's less clear is why all cable subscribers — whether they watch it or not — are forced to subsidize it every month." Setting aside the fallacy that cable companies "subsidize" shows that don't perform well in the ratings – and it is a fallacy – the material that the PTC describes in their review hasn't shown me any indication of "indecent content" except that the appearance was at an awards show that honoured Porn – Gay porn at that – and I'm not entirely sure that the objection isn't primarily due to Gay Porn being the focus of the awards.

Friday, July 13, 2007

Don’t Forget The Singing Lyrics Bee

When I heard that NBC would be airing an episode of their new series The Singing Bee on the same night that FOX would be debuting their new show Don't Forget The Lyrics, it seemed obvious to me that I should watch the two shows on the same night and review them at the same time. It's the sort of a "compare and contrast" thing that we used to do in high school, but that makes it a classic. It concerned me slightly that the episode of The Singing Bee that I'd be watching would apparently be the series' second episode...but not that much. Of course it turned out that NBC wasn't airing a new episode of the show but rather a rerun of the previous night's debut show, something that could be regarded as a mistake if what you're intent on is taking a big shot at a show which basically stole your premise. But hey, what do I know.

Let's start with The Singing Bee since the show has at least a vaguely original premise. It's not totally original but it "borrows" from an interesting source – the Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee! Host Joey Fatone – second place finisher of Dancing With The Stars who seems to be alternating this gig with appearing on the DWTS live tour – goes into the audience and selects six players at random. I mean supposedly he's listening for people who sing the song that is being played correctly but it certainly helps to be in the front row or the first couple of seats on the aisle. The players are brought on stage to compete. Each player is given the name of a song and the date it was released after which the song is played when the music and the professional singer with the house band "The Buzz" (Bee – Buzz, get it? Good, 'cause I don't want it) stops they have to sing the next line correctly. Correctly means without added "yeahs" "ohs" and various other words that singers – even pros - sometimes add to a song. The first four players to get their line correct go on to the next round, which in theory means that if the first four players get their lines correct on the first try the other two players don't even get to try. In the second round, the four players are paired off. Each has to sing a longer line of a song once the music ends but this time the words of the line are visible to them on a large monitor. The problem is that they're scrambled and the player has to figure out the order. If both players get it right, or both get it wrong, they go on to another round, but when one gets it right he is paired off with the winner of the other match. This leads to the Championship Match. It's similar to the first round but with a higher degree of difficulty. Players have to sing the chorus of a song correctly. As in the second round if both players get their chorus right, or if both get it wrong, they get another song to sing, but if there's a winner he goes on to face "The Final Countdown."

You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned the word "money" yet. That's because to this point in the game no one else has either. That's left until "The Final Countdown" – everything else has been an elimination process for this. "The Buzz" have seven songs for the "Final Countdown." For each song in which the player correctly sings the line after the band stops he or she wins $5,000, but if the player gets five songs correct the prize becomes $50,000. "The Final Countdown" can also end if the player gets the final line of three songs wrong, in which case the player takes home however much has been won up to the time of the third strike.

Don't Forget The Lyrics has a more familiar vibe about it, like most of the other game shows on TV. The biggest similarity though is to Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, though FOX would probably prefer a comparison to Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader. Host Wayne Brady welcomes a contestant who is given nine categories to choose from. Each category has a choice of two songs. The contestant picks one song and sings along to it until the music stops at which point the player has to sing the next words, with the number they have to sing depending on the monetary level they're at. Money start at $2,500and goes up until the fifth question at $25,000. The $25,000 level is a plateau; if you get the words wrong after this point you are guaranteed to win $25,000. After this things get increasingly difficult. Until this point each song has had four missing words; now the number of missing words increases to as many as ten. Players have a total of three "Backups" which are the equivalent of "Helps" on other shows. The three are "Backup Singers," where the player can ask the two family members or friends that they brought with them for help; "2 Words," where the player can check to see if two words from the lyrics they gave are right; and "3 Lines," where the player can see three possible lines for the song one of which is the correct line. If the player gets the correct answers for all nine categories they have the option of facing "The Million Dollar Song," however what the rules for this final obstacle are is as yet unclear.

NBC rushed to get The Singing Bee on the air after FOX announced Don't Forget The Lyrics and I think it's a good thing that they did. The show, which was originally slated to alternate with 1 vs. 100 is more innovative than Don't Forget The Lyrics but I have difficulty seeing it succeeding outside of the summer TV season without some serious retooling. Selecting players "randomly" from the audience gives it a real game show feel, but it takes a long time for the players to get into a position where they can win any money and the prize amount is relatively small. The show seems too compressed for the current half-hour time slot but at the same time I don't see how you could expand it to fit the hour time slot that 1 vs. 100 manages easily. Maybe the best thing about The Singing Bee is Joey Fatone, who has a natural ease and presence as host. I could easily see him hosting a non-singing game show at least as well as a comedian like Bob Saget.

As for Don't Forget The Lyrics, it suffers from mimicking an established format that has been used with variations on other shows. The only thing that really makes it unique is the application of the "singing" gimmick. Certainly the ability to pre-screen contestants has the potential to deliver some "interesting" performances, at least if the performance of the show's first contestant is any benchmark. The woman's voice had only a casual relationship with concepts like pitch and key. The show is quite clearly suited to an hour time slot although the half-hour time period that it occupies also allows for creating drama by way of cliff-hangers, and it doesn't hurt that the show airs on consecutive nights. As host, comedian Wayne Brady is adequate, but doesn't have the freshness of Fatone. I can't shake feeling that any other stand up comedian who is reasonably well known on TV could fill the role of host for this show and no one would really notice.

I can't say that I'll be watching future episodes of either The Singing Bee or Don't Forget The Lyrics. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I am not a huge music fan and my tastes tend to be towards shows that reward people for being smart – or retaining useless trivia, take your pick. Both of these shows did well in the ratings, drawing numbers that would be respectable during the main season and are spectacular for the summer. I have no doubt that both shows will be showered with the "coveted" accolade of "Best of the week" from the PTC. Both shows are innocuous and sincerely good family viewing even if they do deal with "rock and or roll." No, there's nothing really wrong with the shows; the problem is that there's not enough that's really right about them for me to generate any real enthusiasm for them. I can't recommend either show even though I don't really have anything against them. It's going to be telling to learn if either or both are able to maintain the ratings that they received in their debut episodes. They do seem to be ideal shows to plug holes in the Fall line up when (not if for either network) those holes develop. I probably won't be any happier about the prospect than I am now though.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Short Takes – July 10, 2007

It's funny how this regular feature has sort of migrated. I meant it to be something to run on the weekends but somehow it keeps moving further and further into the week. Of course since it's summer it really doesn't matter all that much, but if I start thinking like that I start wondering if any of this matters and of course the answer is "No it really doesn't" and it gets all sort of weird and philosophical. I guess all I can really hope for is that by the end of the summer this will have migrated back to the weekends.

Goofy Censorship: I don't normally refer to Entertainment Weekly or its website but their TVWatch is the only TV specific news feed available through iGoogle which is one of my home pages. I sometimes comment on their recap pages and as a result I've become aware of their comment censorship. When someone typed "Ding-Dong, the girls are gone" (related to On The Lot) what appeared on the page was "Ding-****, the girls are gone." It gets better though. In the comments for Big Brother, where one of the houseguests is named "Dick" – or as he wants people to call him "Evil Dick" – when you type his name in the comments section it is printed as "****" or "Evil ****". Very strange.

Reilly good news: Okay, I couldn't resist the pun, but it is good news – at least right now – for Kevin Reilly. Reilly, you may recall, was unceremoniously fired as President of the NBC Entertainment Division after three years of trying to ameliorate Jeff Zucker's long history of mistakes, a project made more difficult by Zucker's meddling ways. Reilly was fired just weeks after signing a big contract renewal with the network and days after the somewhat lukewarm response from advertisers to the shows that he presented at the Upfronts. Now, less than two months after Reilly left NBC he is the new President of Entertainment at FOX where he replaces Peter Ligouri who becomes Chairman of FOX Entertainment. In fact it was Ligouri who made the move to FOX attractive to Reilly. The two men had previously worked together at News Corp's F/X cable channel, in positions that pretty much mimic their new responsibilities. At F/X Reilly was responsible for developing such shows as Nip/Tuck and The Shield. At FOX, his duties will include destroying new shows that he was responsible for approving at NBC and serving as shepherd for a number of shows that he had nothing to do with getting on the air. The question that Reilly's appointment raises almost immediately is whether he will continue his policy of pushing quality programming that he advocated at NBC and which may well have been responsible for his replacement there. There's some worry on that front, given FOX's tendency to cancel programs very quickly and often replacing them with low cost reality shows. Then there's the record of people holding the job of President of Network Entertainment at FOX. Except for Gail Berman, who held the job for five years, the network averages a major executive change roughly every two years. This includes Ligouri, altouh his major move is up rather than out.

Who does the PTC hate this week?: A while ago our local police force finally joined the last half of the 20^th century and began air patrols over the city of Saskatoon. I don't think they actually bought a plane but are leasing a Cessna or something similar. It doesn't really matter. What does matter – at least in the context of this is that the plane frequently flies at night. Most people don't notice because they're asleep. Indeed, as you know from looking at the time stamps of many of my posts on this blog I'm awake late into the night and until recently I had never noticed the airplane. However there are a vocal group of complainers for whom any sound seems to be sufficient to rouse them from their sleep and keep them up to a point where they are apparently dangerous at whatever job they hold. They are vocal in their opposition to the police flights. To the very notion that the flights actually make the police more efficient in catching criminals they respond that no matter what the flights accomplish in crime fighting, it's not worth it because they are losing sleep and it makes them dangerous and less efficient at their workplaces. The plane complainers are a small group – possibly no more than a literal handful – but as I said they are vocal group. They write letters to the newspaper demanding that the airplane be grounded forever, and that police aerial patrols be banned, and they appear before City Council demanding that "something" (like grounding the plane and banning the patrols) be done to save their sleep. But they don't say it's "their sleep" they say that it is the sleep of everyone in the city that is being disturbed by the police aircraft and that presumably we are becoming a city of sleep deprived zombies. That's how I feel about the Parents Television Council; a small group that speaks with a very loud (and frequently obnoxious) voice claiming that they are speaking if not for everyone then for a far larger group than they actually represent - in the case of the PTC, all parents, and indeed all "right" thinking people (and no that wasn't a political "right"). They are defending "us" against "evil" authority in the form of the networks, the cable companies and obviously left-wing judges who think that it's alright to say bad words on TV (bad words, of course being defined by the PTC – remember they wanted to fine ABC when Helen Mirren said that she nearly fell "ass over tits" at the Academy Awards).

So who does the PTC see as a threat to our very existence this week? On the Broadcast side it's the CW's summer burn-off – which has already finished being burned off by the way – Hidden Palms. The PTC strikes out at Hidden Palms this time – since you'll recall that they also made the pilot the worst of the week for depicting a father's suicide and the effect it had on his teenaged son who witnessed it – because of sex. Specifically because one of the characters, high school junior Cliff, had sex with older women including his "best friend's mother." Of course the PTC gave us detailed, if out of context, descriptions of Cliff's "activities." "Before the opening credits had finished, Cliff was shown in bed with two different women. The first scene featured Cliff emerging from under the covers with a much older woman, implying that he has just performed oral sex on her. Suddenly, Cliff jumps out of bed to go meet another girl. The woman he is with seems disgruntled by his behavior, but Cliff tells her that she can't be upset since she has only given him 'one booty call in nine months.' Cliff makes his way to teenager Nikki's house and we find him once again under the covers with a girl. It is implied that Cliff and Nikki have just had sex.... Later in the show, Nikki walks-in on Cliff once again having an intimate exchange with the older woman (Maria) and becomes upset. Cliff apologizes and promises himself to Nikki. The show concludes with Maria meeting Cliff in his bedroom and once again seducing him into having sex. Cliff's mother walks in the room to discover them in his bed." Ah but it's the "nine months" remark that really has the PTC "hot and bothered": "High school junior Cliff is having sex with his best friend's mother – and he acknowledges doing so over nine months previously, meaning that Cliff was clearly underage when the act occurred. The CW is not only accepting but actually glamorizing statutory rape. Is this behavior we want to encourage teens to view as normal or even acceptable?" That of course is a huge logical jump without any knowledge of the background of the event. The implication of the term "statutory rape" is that the older person was the "aggressor" and from the description of Cliff and his sexual antics it seems far more likely that Cliff was the persuasive one in this situation and that the older woman who "has only given him 'one booty call in nine months,'" was the one who was seduced by Cliff. As for its impact on the attitude of teen viewers, since the ratings appear to be low even by CW standards, one should perhaps ask what the impact is of a show that virtually no one – regardless of age – is watching?

As for the worst cable show of the week, the PTC returns to an old favourite Paris & Nicole in The Simple Life on the E! Network. In the episodes in question, the "girls" (aka "skanky hos" though that may be offensive to skanky hos – you can tell I don't like Paris & Nicole) are counsellors at "Camp Shawnee" which, like most of the things in the reality show isn't real – the facility is a real camp but as the Wikipedia article on the show puts it, "The campers are not the camp's real campers, and at least one of the counselors, Hunter Cross, admits he is an actor who auditioned for the role. Also, the camp nurse is an actress according to IMDB." The series premiere earned the PTC's ire for among other things, enemas. In this episode, which was the series finale, Paris and Nicole are helping to run a "love camp." According to the PTC, "Guided by Dr. Diana, the girls helped five couples reconnect. And by reconnecting, E! meant a hearty mixture of sexual innuendo, graphic body waxing and sex toys." There is a discussion of the anus as an erogenous zone and a couple who have been married for 43 years talk about how much he likes her boobs and how much she likes a certain "position." The PTC article culminates with the usual railing against the "forced subsidy from cable television subscribers" which is apparently used to prop up the show. And of course this is a huge load of what Norman Schwartzkopf (remember him?) once called "bovine scatology." Comcast, which owns E!, is a business, and as with all businesses is run with a sharp pencil (and if you want proof of that, just look at the history of programming on their G4 network – it makes one weep). The bottom line with them is the bottom line; they are not a charity. If the audiences for The Simple Life weren't there, advertisers wouldn't buy time on the show and paris & Nicole would be out on their anorexic little bottoms faster than you can say rehab. In other words E! doesn't "prop up" The Simple Life, the show pays its own way without the "forced subsidy from cable television subscribers" which most of the rest of the world calls fees. And here of course is the big one: not every show on E! is The Simple Life. Shocking, I know, but true. There might even be some that the PTC might actually approve of (though heaven alone knows what they might be). Given that the structure of Cable Television is what it currently is – and as I've said before I do support the concept of cable choice, and wouldn't have E! or its Canadian doppelganger Star on my TV line-up if I had the choice even though it isn't costing me more – the simple answer is that if you disapprove of The Simple Life turn the TV off or watch a channel that you do want to see.

Charles Lane 1905-2007

I knew this day was coming but hoped it wouldn't be quite this soon. Sadly we have learned of the passing of fabled character actor Charles Lane on Monday at the age of 102 years and six months. According to his son Tom, "He was lying in bed with his eyes real wide open. Then he closed his eyes and stopped breathing.''

Born Charles Levison in San Francisco on January 26, 1905 he was one of the last survivors of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. He was working as an insurance salesman and doing some amateur theatre when a friend (reportedly actor and director Irving Pitchel) suggested that turn entirely to acting. He trained at the famed Pasadena Playhouse before making his movie debut in an uncredited role as a hotel clerk in the 1931 James Cagney-Edward G. Robinson movie Smart Money. It was the first of over 250 movies. In 1932, he married Ruth Covell, a marriage which lasted 70 years until her death in 2002. In addition to his son Tom they had a daughter, Alice Deane.

In the 1930s he began what turned into a long collaboration with director Frank Capra. He appeared in eight Capra films including Mr. Deeds Goes To Town, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, and It's A Wonderful Life. One of Lane's proudest possessions was a letter from Capra that said "I am sure that everyone has someone that he can lean on and use as a crutch whenever stories and scenes threaten to fall apart. Well, Charlie, you've been my No. 1 crutch." It was also in the 1930s that he developed a friendship with a young chorus girl at RKO. Her name: Lucille Ball. Lane did a number of episodes of I Love Lucy and the follow-up Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, and played the banker, Mr. Barnstahl, in the first season of The Lucy Show. Accounts vary as to why he left the series. Author of The Lucy Book, Geoffrey Fidelman claims that Lane was let go because he trouble reciting his lines (difficult to believe). He told an interviewer that the main reason he had been let go was because Lucy wanted her longtime friend Gale Gordon in the role instead (Gordon had also been the first choice to play Fred Mertz. Gordon would co-star with Ball in all three of her post-I Love Lucy series). According to Lane, "Lucille was an extraordinary talent and I was madly in love with her. She had me doing this very big character part on a regular basis—and then Gale Gordon was again available, and she wanted him in the role. I was terribly disappointed, but I could understand perfectly." (Of course the same interviewer has Lane smoking a cigarette three years after the actor is supposed to have quit smoking.)

Lane's experience as a character actor in the 1930s led to him becoming one of the first members of the Screen Actors Guild. In 1933 alone he made 23 movies and as a contract player was being paid $35 a day. He said of the founding of the Guild "They'd work you until midnight and get you back at seven in the morning. The actors were taking a terrible licking physically. Generally, as the case with any union, you form it because people are abused." By 1947, thanks in part to the Guild, Lane was making $750 a week. Lane worked in so many movies over the years that he occasionally went to the theatre only to find that he was in the movie he had paid to see. The only real interruption to his busy schedule was during World War II when he served in the US Coast Guard aboard an attack transport. Between the end of 1942 and the beginning of 1946 he made only two movies – Mission To Moscow and Arsenic And Old Lace.

One of his earliest TV roles was an episode of the series Topper in 1954. TV soon became a regular venue for him, usually in a guest appearance as in his several appearances on I Love Lucy, or single episodes of other shows, but sometimes in recurring roles as in Dennis The Menace where he played Mr. Finch the storekeeper. He was a founding member of the Television Academy. His versatility – or the typecasting he was forced to endure – was such that he was equally at home in dramas and in comedies.

Still he may be best known to TV audiences for the role of Homer Bedloe in Petticoat Junction. Bedloe, vice-president of the C&FW Railroad was a grouchy curmudgeon with the heart of an adding machine who lived to see the Hooterville Cannonball on the scrap heap and Shady Rest Hotel boarded up. In a way, Bedloe may be comparable to Ahab in Moby Dick, or (to make things lighter) the Coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons. The Cannonball is his white whale or his Roadrunner, a foe that he becomes obsessed with vanquishing to the exclusion of all sense of proportion. Bedloe is a perfect villain for the show and is used perfectly. He isn't a permanent presence seen every episode but he is a permanent threat because there is always the uncertainty of when he will show up with another scheme that Kate Bradley will have to thwart.

By the time he did Petticoat Junction Charles Lane was largely typecast as a grouchy curmudgeonly type. As his New York Times obituary puts it, "His bony physique, craggy face and the authoritarian or supercilious way he would peer through his spectacles at his fellow actors eventually led to his being typecast and locked into playing a succession of lawyers, judges, assorted lawmen and other abrasive roles." Like most actors who are typecast he resented it; he called it "... a pain in the ass. You did something that was pretty good, and the picture was pretty good. But that pedigreed you into that type of part, which I thought was stupid and unfair, too. It didn't give me a chance, but it made the casting easier for the studio."

As Charles Lane grew older he became a much beloved figure as well as the oldest living American actor. In 2005 on the occasion of his 100^th birthday, SAG declared January 30 as "Charles Lane Day" and he was also honoured by the Television Academy at the 2005 Emmy Awards. The 2005 TVLand Awards honoured him as well. At the end of that tribute he announced "If you're interested, I'm still available!" Someone took him up on it – in 2006 he was the narrator for a short called The Night Before Christmas (interestingly this was filmed at the Henning Estate and the credits at the end not only thank Charles Lane but also his Petticoat Junction co-star – and Paul Henning's daughter, Linda Henning). Charles Lane was also interviewed for the soon to be released documentary You Know The Face, produced by Garret Boyajian, who also produced The Night Before Christmas.

Let's finish up with the tribute from the 2005 TVLand Awards, which interestingly enough doesn't include any scenes from Petticoat Junction, and only a fraction of the other TV shows he appeared on.

Monday, July 09, 2007

It’s 8 About Me

I've been tagged by Sam for a meme. I'll be able to do most of it bust as far as passing it on, I'm afraid I'm a dead end. I'll explain at the appropriate time.

Here are the rules.

We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
People who are tagged must make a post about their eight things and post these rules.
At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
Don't forget to leave them each a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

Okay, here goes.

1. The only car I've ever owned was a 1964 MGB that I bought for $450, and probably overpaid for. It was almost literally held together with spit and bailing twine – well really it was solid core electrical wire and paint and if you think I'm kidding you'd be wrong. The car had a battery box at the back for two six volt batteries and the battery box was so rusted away that the only thing holding the batteries in the car was some wire that connected the two sides of the battery box. Damn I loved that car and it killed me to sell it.

2. I failed my driver's test three times, the last time before I even got out of the parking lot at SGI (Saskatchewan Government Insurance, which also handles driver's licenses in this province). That was about 25 years ago and while I'll probably have another go at it soon I really haven't missed it.

3. When I was 8 years old I was hit by a speeding car while I was writing my bicycle. The only thing that was broken was my bike. And that was in the era before bike helmets. In fact the only bone I've ever broken was one of my toes when I stubbed my toe on the frame of my brother's futon nine years ago. I set it myself because I know that there's nothing a doctor can do for a broken toe.

4. A university final exam (one) cost me my only chance to take a trip to Disneyland, and another final exam (one), several years later cost me my only chance to take a trip to Europe. And yes, I was pissed off, particularly when the one exam (the one that kept me from going to Disneyland with my mother and little brother) lasted only one hour instead of the scheduled three.

5. My musical tastes tend toward '40s Big Band Jazz – Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, and the Dorsey Brothers. I would love to know if there is any recording of Ken Curtis with the Tommy Dorsey band during his brief time as one of many replacements for Frank Sinatra (Curtis, who played Festus Hagen on Gunsmoke, had a truly beautiful singing voice which heard particularly well in the John Wayne movie Rio Grande). I also own a set of five CDs of Canadian Big Bands, which seem to be pretty rare (they aren't even available on EBay).

6. I went to high school with a Playboy Playmate of the Year (Shannon Tweed, who is now featured on A&E's Gene Simmons: Family Jewels) – she was a year behind me and I don't recall ever meeting her – and the Vice President of R&D at Pixar (Darwyn Peachey) who at the time was a close friend. Neither of which gives me much more than a very good Kevin Bacon number – I graduated with Darwyn; Darwyn is credited on Toy Story which starred Tom Hanks; Tom Hanks worked with Kevin Bacon in Apollo 13.

7. I wanted to be a naval officer until it became abundantly clear that my eye sight would mean that I'd fail the physical even for a reserve commission.

8. Five Pin Bowling is the only sport that I've ever really been any damned good at – if you don't count Poker as a sport.

I won't be passing this on. I know that virtually no one on my blog list would respond, so why bother. I mean Sam got Ivan, and basically I know that Tim Gueguen and Tom Sutpen won't respond and Ronniecat probably wouldn't so that basically leaves Linda, who I know loves these things, but if I can only come up with one responder why bother.

Saturday, July 07, 2007

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others

There are a couple of reasons for this title which will become clear in due time, but for the moment, let's just bask in the return of Big Brother – the horribly mutated version for North America. It's true, this is not the show that John de Mol created and which the rest of the world watches and participates in by calling in and voting for who should be evicted and who should stay. CBS tried that in the summer of 2000, and I think it's fair to say that if that were the only example of a reality show that was on the air that year the genre might have died "a-borning." But there was a little show called Survivor – which I'm convinced that no one at either Endemol or CBS thought was going to take off the way it did – that kicked Big Brother in the balls and took its lunch money. And when Big Brother came back for its second season it had ceased to be a show where the audience was an active participant and became a somewhat weak Survivor clone, but one which holds an audience.

This season the Big Brother house has been done over in a sort of Alice in Wonderland – or probably more accurately an Alice Through The Looking Glass – motif complete with one bedroom where everything is oversized and one is undersized (to say the least). And there was one room where the beds were round for no apparent reason, although I'm sure we'll discover one eventually. The eleven house guests were let into the house in groups of four, three, and four. Yes, I did say eleven, which is down from last year, but that's part of The Twist for this season (or one of the twists anyway). Naturally the "randomly chosen" first four – Carol, Joe, Mike and Amber (not that one) – grab the big beds, while the second three – Nick, Danielle, and Jameka (this season's only African American player, who admits that she doesn't spend much time with White People and is rather nervous about it) have far reduced choices. The final four – Kail, Jen, Eric and Zach – just happens to include some of the tallest members of the cast get the "Hobbit Hole" room with the tiny bed and the low to the floor door.

Once the players have their beds selected they get together in the living room to introduce themselves and it's a chance for us to get a really good look at them. The oldest one – so far – is 38 year old Kail while the youngest at "not quite 21" is blonde Danielle. In fact this is probably the youngest group of houseguests ever since – of the ones we know about – the only other one out of his twenties is graphic designer Zach. There's the usual sort of bitchy but insubstantial comments that occur. One houseguest states in confessional that she doesn't think another woman is "a person of substance" because of her enormous giant boobs." Don't snicker; from such facile observations are alliances forged on this show. The big early revelation is that Joe is Gay (no shock there). Actually he says that he works as a receptionist in a children's hair salon which is about the least "butch" job one can think of and yet another example of Big Brother casting the most stereotypical Gay people in America. Kail (who owns multiple businesses and is willing to tell us all about how most of her small Oregon town works for her or her family, but has only told her fellow houseguests that she was "just" a real estate agent) came off as something of a homophobe when she said in confessional that she would be "heartbroken" of one of her children "chose a Gay lifestyle." Which is a pretty crappy thing to say, but there's a bit of a hitch because we don't know when these confessionals were shot, and there are revelations to come about our happy little Gay guy.

The revelations are going to come because of the first Twist of the season. Host Julie Chen shows up on the living room monitor and tells the denizens of the minimum security prison known as the Big Brother House that they are not the only houseguests in the building. They are three people that they know; possibly a rival, an enemy or someone they have unfinished business with. And they're watching the action in the living room on TV. The three are Joe's ex, Dustin, "Evil" Dick (he insists on calling himself "Evil") who is Danielle's estranged father, and Jessica who is owed $5 by Carol from back when they were in high school. Huh!? Back downstairs the main group of inmates is speculating on who from their past life could be upstairs. Joe almost immediately says it has to be Dustin, and claims that Dustin gave him gonorrhoea (Dustin says it was Joe who was cheating and gave him The Clap), and that after they broke up Joe turned all of Dustin's friends against him. If Kail's comments about the Gay Lifestyle came after hearing this, they may seem just a bit less homophobic. Or maybe not. Suffice it to say that "our happy little Gay guy" doesn't come off at all well even without a rebuttal from Dustin. Danielle is afraid that it's probably her dad but doesn't say anything, while Kail is mostly worried that someone from her hometown will reveal the fact that she is – say it with me folks – a multiple business owner. As for Carol, she can't figure out who from her life could be somewhere in the house except maybe one of the girls she dissed when she was in high school.

The HOH competition was a bog standard one with a bit of a spin added to it – so to speak. Players paired up (with one not getting a partner and thus not competing) and while one player sat on a giant mushroom (like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland – remember that part of the theme) while their partner answered questions based on what the houseguest said in a general questionnaire before the start of the show. For every incorrect answer the mushroom of the "answerer's" partner would spin faster. Eric, who was trying desperately to answer questions wrong, ended up winning the challenge with his partner Kail who stuck to the mushroom like glue. Then Julie announced that the Head of Household would be chosen by the three players we haven't met yet. They decided to give it to Kail. Then, after everyone cleaned up (there were geysers of mud and a cloud of powdery white dust for the mushroom riders), the three players upstairs came down to meet everybody else. Pointedly Joe refused to shake hands with Dustin, but clearly the most emotional situation related to the massively tattooed "Evil" Dick and his daughter who fled to the bathroom along with most of the women on the show. I suspect that while Dustin & Joe is the relationship with the most external conflict, whatever happened between Dick and Danielle goes a lot deeper.

Ah, but there's one more complication thrown into the mix for this season and it's The Big Twist. Throughout the show they had been teasing us with the idea that one houseguest would be ours (the audience's) to control. At the end of the episode it is finally revealed that the one to be controlled would be Eric, who had been Kail's partner in the HOH competition. At the end of each episode viewers will be polled as to what "we" want Eric to do in a given situation ranging from how we want him to vote during the eliminations to which woman (I think/hope it's only women) he should start a "showmance" with. He's our little puppet to master. And while It's not the same as being able to vote out houseguests ourselves as is done in other shows in the Big Brother worldwide franchise, it is a lot more interactivity than has been available in the past. Despite the fact that he seems like the other players Eric is most assuredly not like the others.

The Big Brother houseguests are in their seventh day in the Big House. It is possible to get the live Internet feeds on Real Networks, but for the first time ever there is a daily three hour show available on the American cable network Showtime Too called Big Brother After Dark which shows viewers what's going on, live, in the Big Brother house from Midnight to 3 a.m. Eastern which is 9 p.m. to Midnight in California where the house is located – according to producer Allison Grodner, "That's primetime for the Big Brother house. It's when our houseguests are most wide awake and having fun, talking about strategy and playing the game. People are going to see quite a bit." And since it's on cable it won't be as censored as the broadcast programming is. Unfortunately that option isn't available in Canada. Global, which broadcasts Big Brother in Canada is offering an interactive contest called "In The House" where players can answer questions on their computers as each episode progresses. The highest point total for the week wins a TV with the highest point total for the year winning tickets to the show's wrap party. It's all part of an effort to make Big Brother 8 a more involving experience for the viewers at home. (Of course if you can't be bothered with the internet live feeds and aren't willing to subscribe to Showtime Too there's always Jackie's blog The (TV) Show Must Go On where she makes a heroic effort to summarize what's going on in the house, complete with her patented eyerolls @@. She has also posted the names of some other sites that recap the live feeds.)

Big Brother is the height of mindless summertime programming, the sort of thing that has little significance and not much in the way of dramatic qualities. The "characters" aren't particularly compelling and the casting – this year in particular – has tended to focus on the young and insubstantial rather than people who have accomplished something in their lives as some previous seasons have had. Purely on the level of the three episodes a week that most people see it can be dismissed as a typical reality show. Dimension is added however by the ability to see material other than what the show's producers edit for mainstream consumption – the live feeds and now Big Brother After Dark – which gives an enhanced view of what is occurring in the house. Because it's live it represents a more candid view of the people in the house. It's still "reality TV" but it's "reality" as it happens rather than interpreted by producers and editors looking to create artificial conflict and dramatic storylines. Where the series is finally making a breakthrough is in terms of interactivity. By giving the viewers a player to "control," even to the limited degree that we will be able to make decisions for him; the producers have made a big step. Having Eric "controlled" by the viewers breaks down the fourth wall from our side, making those who vote on what he should do participants rather than just observers. It's a small step, but more than the baby steps of other audience participation shows like American Idol in making TV interactive. And if you don't think this is significant consider something the Dianne Krisitine posted in Blogcritics. The article titled TV Yearns to Let You Choose Your Own Adventure states that new NBC Entertainment boss Ben Silverman wants to develop dramatic series along the lines of "choose your own adventure books" where decisions made by readers – or in the case of TV, viewers – influence the direction in which the story goes leading eventually to different endings. Indeed Chuck Lorre proposed a primitive version of this to FOX in 2001 with a show called Nathan's Choice where viewers would vote during a commercial break as to which of two options the lead character would take and then air the second act of the episode based on the viewers vote. With the "America's Player" idea, in which some of Eric's actions are controlled by the players, we are seeing this idea in action, although admittedly not in the format that either Silverman or Lorre envisioned. It'll to be interesting to see how this is going to work.

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Short Takes – July 5, 2007

Summertime, and the livin' is easy. Well not noticeably so but you know how it is. My mother got back from Vancouver (bringing my nephew back to his mother) after spending a week with my brother, his fiancé and her son and parents. She said that Greg sent something back for me with her – it turned out to be my tax information (he did them for me because I didn't have a printer until after the income tax season ended). The weird thing was that not only wasn't I disappointed, it was way more than I expected.

A belated Happy Fourth of July to my American readers – well USAian, since Canadians and Mexicans and everyone else south of the Rio Grande are also "Americans" but you get my drift. As usual, I watched 1776 rather than the totally botched presentation of the Boston Pops 4^th of July concert that CBS will be putting on. I loved it on A&E but when they moved it to CBS the quality of all three went way down. I had planned to get this out sooner but stuff kept getting in the way. Not that there's much to report beyond the usual PTC stuff but let's try.

Washington week in review: Isaiah Washington continues to try to apportion blame for his no longer being on Grey's Anatomy. You may recall that he first blamed ABC for firing him after he had done everything (and more) that the network told him he needed to do to stay on the show. The words "law suit" were even uttered. Then he blamed the media – always a favourite for actors and embattled politicians. Next he blamed T.R. Knight, or at least said that Knight should have been fired instead of him. Apparently (and no I don't get this line of reasoning) Knight should have been let go because he was offended by Washington's use of the derogatory term, and because he was angling for a raise. Most recently Washington has decided to blame Grey's Anatomy star Patrick Dempsey. He told Larry King that he got into the infamous fight with Dempsey after Dempsey wanted to delay shooting a scene until Ellen Pompeo arrived on set. Washington told Dempsey that he didn't need Pompeo and "I can act," which supposedly sent Dempsey into another zone. "He became unhinged, sprayed spittle in my face. I'm asking him why is he screaming at me. ... He just becomes irate." He says he used "the word" not as a homophobic slur but that it "implied 'somebody who is being weak.'" – presumably Dempsey. So far Washington hasn't blamed any of the female members of the Grey's Anatomy cast. Nor has he put the blame on the person who really deserves it – the man in the mirror. The whole matter would have blown over if Washington hadn't made the incredibly stupid decision to deny using "the word" by actually using "the word". Isaiah Washington needs to "ferment son bouche" stop digging a deeper hole for himself before he ends up doing dinner theatre in Arkansas.

Casting news: Dana Delaney will apparently be cast as Bree's "long lost sister," a passive-aggressive conservative Republican woman who used to live in the neighbourhood and is married to a much younger man. Reportedly the producers are looking at Nathan Fillion, the 36 year-old Canadian actor who starred in Firefly and Miss Match to play the 51 year-old Delaney's husband. Fillion most recently starred in Drive and may be getting a reputation as the new Ted McGinley for the number of series he's been in that died quick unnoticed deaths but remember, Firefly and Drive were on FOX while Miss Match was produced by 20^th Century Fox. Maybe Fillion just has to keep away from projects associated in any way with Rupert Murdoch.

Recasting news: Also known as "the pilot was sold, now let's get rid of the cast who were in it." I'm not sure how much of this is a result of Newtork weasels sticking their snouts into projects that have been already sold but it seems that after pilots are sold there comes a sudden spate of recasting which leads to people who worked well in the pilot being replaced for no apparent reason. Just consider the following:

Marrin Dungey, who played Dr. Naomi Barrett in the backdoor pilot of Private Practice is out; Broadway actress Audra McDonald in.
Brett Cullen (Governor Ray Sullivan in The West Wing), who played the father in the pilot of The CW's Life Is Wild is out; D.W. Moffett from Hidden Palms and For Your Love in, playing the father.
Mae Whitman (Ann Veal on Arrested Development) out as Becca Sommers on Bionic Woman out; no replacement announced but the character will no longer be deaf.
Amber Valetta out as Coraline in Moonlight; Shannyn Sossamon (Kira on Dirt) in.
Shannon Lucio (Lindsay in The O.C.) out as Beth in Moonlight; Sophia Myles in.
Rade Serbedzija (Dmitri Gredenko on 24 this season) out as Josef, Jason Dohring (Logan from Veronica Mars) in.

At least two of the cast changes on Moonlight relate to the arrival of former Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel producer David Greenwalt as Executive Producer/Showrunner. The replacement of Serbedzija with Dohring is particularly jarring since Serbedzija is an older Eastern European type guy and Dohring is – you know – neither of those things. I suppose that making Josef a "young, mischievous hedge-fund trader" rather than an old-school vampire who is mentoring the lead character in an uneasy alliance is meant to attract a hip young audience as well as being in keeping with the notion that vampires don't age, but for me there's something to the notion of having someone who looks and sounds as if he could have been best buds with Vlad the Impaler acting as the lead character's mentor rather than some guy who looks like he should be going to Grad School regardless of how long ago he went through the change. I also don't get what the reasoning could be behind changing the Becca character on Bionic Woman from deaf to hearing, since none is given. Is it because deaf people aren't supposed to be attractive, or audiences can't relate to the deaf? Which is obviously why I am neither a Network Executive or a Showrunner

Who does the PTC hate this week?: Well obviously they hate TV violence, so it's no surprise that PTC President Tim Winter was at the Senate Commerce Committee hearings on Violence on Television talking up the organization's position on the badness of violence on TV. He cited the PTC's study which claimed that e TV season which concluded last year was the "most violent that the PTC has ever recorded – averaging 4.41 instances of violence per hour, every hour, during prime time, or one instance every 13½ minutes – an increase of 75% since the 1998 television season." A little later we'll see just how restrictive the PTC's definition of violence is, but first let's look at the trends that the PTC is seeing. Winter told the Committee, "In addition to the marked increase in the quantity of violence, we are seeing several other disturbing trends. First, the depictions of violence have become far more graphic and more realistic than ever before, thanks in part to enhanced computer graphics employed in television production today. Second, there is an alarming trend for violent scenes to include a sexual element. Rapists, sexual predators and fetishists appear with increasing frequency on prime time programs. Third, we are now seeing the main character – the protagonist the audience is supposed to identify with – as the perpetrator of the most violent acts. And lastly we are seeing more children being depicted as the victims of violence." Which is worrying if taken entirely at face value but I'm not entirely convinced that you can. The appearance of "rapists, sexual predators and fetishists" does not necessarily mean the actual depiction of their activities, and certainly not in graphic detail. The PTC cited a number of examples including episodes of NCIS and CSI. They also cited two FX cable shows – The Shield and Nip/Tuck – for special recognition, even though both shows are scheduled for times later than those when the PTC's supposed concern – children – would normally be watching. But of course the PTC has long ago ceased to be truly concerned with protecting the children and is actually focussed on deciding what everyone should be allowed to watch regardless of age or the time that the show appears.

Of course what would a Winter appearance before any governmental hearing (and TV camera) be without touching on certain favourite topics that are not directly related to TV violence. These include the Second Circuit Court decision and the Janet Jackson incident – "After the Janet Jackson incident, television executives were quick to come before the Congress to pledge zero-tolerance for indecency. Subsequently they filed a federal lawsuit which would allow them to use the F-word at any time of the day, even in front of millions of children. Sadly they managed to find two judges in New York City who agreed with them. And now the networks are in Court again, this time saying that the Janet Jackson incident was not indecent." – the V-Chip – "recall that when the V-Chip was introduced the television industry denounced it as censorial heresy. That is, they denounced it until they found a way to manipulate what was supposed to be a simple solution for parents. Instead the industry turned the V-Chip into a means for even more graphic content while using it as an excuse to violate the broadcast decency law." – and the industry's efforts to educate people on the V-Chip – "Through efforts like the 'TV Boss' campaign, the industry promised you hundreds of millions of dollars to educate parents on content-blocking technologies, yet all objective data shows that parents still have no constructive grasp over the TV ratings system or the technologies that are reliant upon them." – and cable choice - "And Senators, if you subscribe to a cable or satellite service, you are forced to pay almost $9.00 every year to the FX network so they can produce and air this kind of material. And with tens of millions of Americans forced into the industry's bundling scheme, FX reaps hundreds of millions of dollars each year to produce this material, and that is before they sell even one TV commercial." All of these – with the possible exception of the cable choice issue, although I do wonder how much of the $9 subscription fee for F/X the network actually gets – are examples of the PTC manipulating facts to fit their thesis and using dubious surveying techniques as with their survey "proving" that efforts to educate parents on the V-Chip don't work which was included in a general survey not specifically aimed at parents.

Still what I find most amazing is that the PTC wants this to be a one way street where they can complain without contradiction but any effort by the TV industry to defend themselves either must be barred or is regarded as an act of evil-doers: "As troubling as those content examples are, Mr. Chairman, I am equally dismayed by the seeming contempt the industry has for anyone who would suggest reasonable self-restraint. Recently the CEO of Time-Warner decried this hearing, likening your concerns to Nazi Germany." This is interesting since surely any action that the Senate Committee would require of the networks would not be "self-restraint" but rather legislatively imposed restraint in the form of increased regulation of content. And then there's this: "Every time the public – and our public servants – call for more responsible behavior, the industry refuses to have a meaningful dialog or offer real solutions. Rather than coming before you to address the negative impact their products have on children, they turn the conversation into a lecture on broadcast standards and the Constitution. Rather than acknowledging the scientific evidence manifested in over a thousand medical and clinical studies, they underwrite their own research and point to its differing conclusion. And rather than focusing on their statutory public interest requirements for using the public airwaves, they shift the conversation to entertainment in general and invoke the always-sobering term, 'chilling effect.' But I wonder how 'chilling' things really are if, as we've read in the press, the Fox broadcast network airs a program this fall where an amorous monkey joins a man and woman in a sexual encounter." Because of course the PTC doesn't seem to believe that the protections of the Constitution of the United States extends to Television industry – their attitude on the appeal of the "fleeting obscenity" case came perilously close to saying that the industry should not be allowed to appeal the FCC decision and that the networks were not eligible for the constitutionally guaranteed right of appeal.

In fact although many members of the committee supported increased regulation there are genuine concerns with regards to First Amendment rights. Broadcast and Cable stated that the concerns were bipartisan. Both Ted Stevens (R – AK) and John Sununu (R – NH) raised the issue According to Broadcast & Cable Sununu "said that as 'bothered or disappointed' as he and his colleagues might be by what they see on TV, 'it is very difficult to solve or address with a rule, regulation or law....' Anytime you address the quality, form or content [of programming], he said, 'you run into genuine, important First Amendment questions.'" Broadcast & Cable also reported that Senator Frank Lautenberg (D – NJ) "was concerned about violence, but placed it in a wider context. While he said that TV programming was often vulgar and discouraging and opined of the 'depravity' ruling our behavior, he said regulating that behavior didn't work. 'We tried it once,' he said. 'It was called prohibition.' The key, he said, is finding out how to curb the appetite for such programming--check with the hotels and see what kind of movies people most download, he said – while not violating speech freedoms."

Which brings us to the PTC's Cable Worst of the Week which directly ties into what exactly the PTC counts as "violent content". The show is The Closer which the organization actually praises in the first paragraph of their review. However after that it turns into an attack on the content of the premiere episode. "Unfortunately The Closer's June 18^th season premiere injected unneeded and disturbing graphic violence into a mystery about a murdered family. In the episode's opening, the camera focuses on the dead body of Jenny Anne Wallace, a murdered twelve-year-old. Bloodied stab wounds cover the girl's body. And, to eliminate any doubt about the brutality of the crime, Brenda crouches down and points out: 'There are three visible wounds: one in the back, one in the chest, and one in the throat.'" But of course we aren't seeing "graphic violence," we are seeing the aftermath of violence which isn't shown on screen. The PTC adds "Scenes and descriptions of murder on a show about homicide detectives are to be expected. But there is nothing to be gained in airing the grisly details of a child's murder." In fact there is and it is shown in the clip that the PTC uses to illustrate the "graphic violence" because the characters' reactions reveal something of them. Lt. Provenza (played by Anthony Dennison) is visibly disgusted by the scene and attempts to block the documentary camera shooting the scene. In previous episodes, Provenza has been seen as a callous hard-ass and showing his reaction humanizes him a bit. Brenda's clinical detachment as she examines the body is likewise in keeping with her character. She is reacting on a professional level even though that she will be passionate in her efforts to bring the killer to justice no matter what.

By way of contrast, the show that the PTC labels as the Best of the Week was, amazingly, the finale of ABC's Fast Cars and Superstars, a show in which "celebrities" drive stock cars in a series of racing challenges. I won't go through the description of what the PTC loved about the show – it was more in the way of an episode recap done as breathlessly as is possible on a computer screen or printed page. What was particularly laughable however was the final paragraph: "Fast Cars and Superstars was a huge success. It provided high-intensity, entertaining television that people of any age could appreciate and enjoy." Which of course is why it garnered huge ratings during its run and the admiration of all the TV critics. Oh wait. The critics who bothered to review the show loathed it and the viewers who are supposedly craving this sort of "high-intensity, entertaining television that people of any age could appreciate and enjoy" stayed away in droves. After the series debut, which drew 5.5 million viewers, subsequent episodes lost viewers with the finale drawing 2.15 million viewers and finishing fifth, behind reruns of Reba. This goes to show how out of touch the PTC is with the tastes of the American public. They don't want to see drek like Fast Cars and Superstars and do want quality programming like The Closer or entertaining programming like Hell's Kitchen.